Takeshi Honda (本田 雄) Sakuga MAD - Wait and See ~Risk~ by Hikaru Utada

Another realistic character acting mastermind! It’s kinda hard to describe what makes him different from someone like Hiroyuki Okiura, but there’s just a slightly different feel to the timing and also some of the facial expressions Okiura does are a little different from Honda’s. He’s one of the biggest veterans in the industry making his name known on Evangelion and later on a main contributor on Ghibli movies and a slew of other movies and special projects. It’s hard to pick a favorite one of his scenes, but I think I’d narrow it down to his Naruto movie 1 scene, one of his huge scenes on A Letter to Momo and his work on Boy and the Beast. He also recently released an artbook which I got my hands on and would love to recommend, but unfortunately if you’re in the US, there’s a lot of cases where you’ll be charged tariffs for Japanese imports and it’s kinda a pain to have to worry about that for many people.

In terms of editing this MAD, it was a little tough, partially because I’ve been busy with college again and also because I thought I was feeling a little burnt out of MADs. I’ve covered a good chunk of my favorite animators already so my motivation has not been as up there as it used to be, but eventually I got a flow with editing the clips and it worked out. Though Honda animates a lot of long scenes which I had to cut down to fit many of his works and he also tends to animate some risqué scenes, or not even scenes that are sexual in nature but are brutal and contain nudity. Those had to be cut in a way that hopefully won’t get this video age restricted, and considering the Suzuki MAD I made is fine, I’m sure this one will be too. It kinda took a bit to land on the song choice, but I’m happy with it. I was initially trying to do a mashup of this song (Wait and See ~Risk~ by Hikaru Utada) with a Kenshi Yonezu song by the off chance that Honda appears on the Chainsaw Man movie but I couldn’t make it work so I kept the song as it is. It has some calm moments but also an impactful chorus and I thought a song like that could work for the scenes Honda goes for. And also Honda animated a scene of Utada for Fluximation, so having that was a nice inclusion as well.

I think this might be my last MAD until the end of the year. As I said before, I’m trying to prioritize college with these MADs being a side thing, and I want to make sure that I’m having fun with these as well, as opposed to feeling like “I have to make a MAD for (insert animator or show here)”. Having said that I’ve started planning the 2025 MAD and there’s one more series of MADs that I’ve been sitting on throughout this year and plan to finish and upload by the end of the year. It’s paying tribute to a specific series that I’ve loved for a while, and it’s probably pretty easy to guess since it’s ending this year. After that, I think I might wait for the Chainsaw Man movie to release on Blu-ray and start some MADs on some groups of newer gen animators. There still will be MADs eventually on older gen animators like Toshiyuki Inoue, Yoshinori Kanada and Kazuto Nakazawa but I can’t promise when.